Typhoon Soulik - Update 4

Hey Everybody, 

Just in case you've been watching closely I wanted to let you all know that I am doing just fine over here.  The winds and rain started to be something noticeable about 1 1/2 hours ago.  So far it hasn't been much worse than a moderately bad summer thunderstorm in Wisconsin.  The power went out for about 15 minutes around 12:00 am.  It came back on quickly no problem.  The internet has been a little groggy and so it has taken me a while to get a post up.  I apologize.  

If you've been watching the radar at all it is clear how much the mountains affect the storm.  Pretty much everything breaks up and dissipates before it even reaches us.  Truly, Taichung is the safest place to be on this island in a typhoon.  

The core of the storm is supposed to hit in the next 5-8 hours so I will know more by then.  

In my down time tonight I baked a flourless chocolate cake with vanilla bean creme anglaise sauce.  Then I ate it.  It was delicious. 

Believe it or not that is actually a piece of cake.  It is just so coated in anglaise that it is hard to tell.  Be jealous.  Very jealous. 

I've set alarms so I don't sleep there the core of the storm.  I hope to have an update up around 8 am my time (7pm CST), internet permitting.  

Good night! 

Typhoon Soulik - Update 3

Nothing yet.  

Soulik is on a confident path for Northern Taiwan.  He will come ashore sometime tomorrow evening as a Cat. III Super Typhoon.  Taichung will get hit with the closest thing to a direct hit without actually experiencing the eye.  Soulik is HUGE at 950km across with a 40 km eye (currently loosely formed and in a rebuilding phase).  As expected the storm has weakened over the last 12 hours but is expected to grow in strength again before landfall in Taiwan.  As it strengthens, it is slowing down considerably - hence the change from Friday morning landfall to Friday evening.   I'll save all the scientific mumbo jumbo for right now.  

On the brighter side I've been preparing.  And having fun doing it! 

Allow me to introduce you to Bess' Culinary Typhoon Preparation Kit.  From now on referred to as BCTPK which might be one of the worst acronyms ever to be penned (or in this case keyed.)

For ease I've included only the absolute necessities.  Please feel free to improvise and add whatever other culinary investments you'd like to make. 

#1: BAKED GOODS.  If you haven't already, check out this post about my favorite new bakery in Taichung.  I have a few oldies and a few newbies.  The French bread and garlic bread are now staples so of course I needed both for this weekend.  The weird crescent shaped thing just above the number 1 is Ruth's favorite - slightly smooshed.  It is a rolled bread with ham and turkey and bacon and cheese.  She is a big, big fan.  The chocolate ball there in the bottom right corner is new.  I haven't broken into it yet but I am thinking it is a chocolate bun with a filling covered in cocoa powder and slivered almonds.  I'll get back to you on that one. 
Usage:  Social emergency situations.  These often arise when too many people are stuck in the same small space while typhoon winds rage outside.  Deployment: 1) Identify the crabby, cooped up culprit 2) Kindly suggest they eat a sweet, delicious treat.  3) If step 2 fails, force feed the culprit some tasty treats until their mood improves. 

#2: SNACKS/JUNK FOOD.  You might recognize the Synders pretzel bites.  They are a nice reminder of home and have a delicious cheesy flavor to them.  The HaiTai crackeres are like the most buttery, salty delicious Club Crackers ever.  They make a ginormous mess but are totally worth it.  Pringles and peanuts are pretty much self-explanatory. 
Usage: For use in continual mushy food situations.  Identifiable when suspect's mouth tends to go slack from not having to chew and simply just mushing overcooked ramen between one's teeth for the last three days.  Deployment: 1) Produce crunchy, salt snacks.  2) No one has ever needed a step 2 before.  If you get this far you are doing something wrong. 

#3: WATER.  Um, duh?  Not pictured here:  Lemon Black Tea.  I forgot to add it to the photo but it is just as much of a staple as water is.  My students have figured this out.  Earlier this week I forgot my tea one day and they were very quick to suggest I try to order some for delivery.  It worked out well in the end.

#4:  DRANK.  Um, duh?  Naw, just kidding.  The presence of kid juice and adult juice is crucial to typhoon survival.  How else can you be expected to get through such a long time in the house with the same people?!  This particular kid juice is cranberry juice, though it is far too sweet for my taste.  The bottle is an Italian Moscato.  I've been saving it for something and a typhoon seemed like a good something. 
Usage: Extreme annoyance.  Deployment: 1) Identify the early stages of annoyance among inhabitants.  The indicating signs are: eye rolling, sighing, social and physical distancing, and verbal attacks.  2) If the annoyed inhabitant is not yourself, produce kid juice.  Force feed if necessary.  3)  If the annoyed inhabitant is yourself, pop Moscato.  Drink 1-2 glasses every 2 hours.  Repeat as necessary. 

#5: CANDY.  Here we have a few of my favorites.  Chocolate covered almonds.  Snickers bars.  Maple Pies.  I'm not sure why they are called pies but they are little puff pastries with a maple syrup flavor and caramelized sugar on top.  Delicious. 
Usage: See component #1.  Deployment:  See component #1

There you go.  Now you know how to be prepared for a Super Typhoon Bess style! 

I'll post in the morning as things start to change. 

Bakery

Onslaught of blogging.  RAWR!

Funny how a little change of location can really get you in the mood to blog. 

I found a bakery.  Mmmhmm. 

It's called Champs Elysees.  Creative, eh?  :-p 

Everyday at 5:30 pm they put out fresh everything.  And everything is good.  And everything is cheap.  I've never spent more than USD$6 at a time and I've got a ton of stuff! 

Examples. 

Day 1: 

The French Bread.  Oh my goodness the French Bread.  Listen to me.  This is the best french bread I've ever had and I've. Been. To. FRANCE!!! Warm from the oven.  A crisp crust with the softest center imaginable.  The slightest hint of tang.  The whole baguette is quite large, this is just 2 pieces of 7.  My mouth is watering.... 

Garlic.  I believe this is the same French recipe but as it is hot out of the oven they cut it open and put an amazing collection of butter and spices all over it.  These loaves are much smaller.  Small enough to only feel mildly bad when you eat an entire loaf... in one sitting... before it completely cools.... Judge me all you want.  I'm happy.

Cheese.  This was a mild disappointment but it was still amazing.  I'm not a huge fan of the cheese they use most here.  It is a very creamy cheese and I prefer my cheeses to have a kick!

Chocolate.  This is a chocolate bun.  Have you ever had the fresh buns from Sam's Club?  In my family we use them for ham and cheese sandwiches, and shredded beef, and a bazillion other things.  This is a sweet chocolate version of that.  FILLED WITH CHOCOLATE MOUSSE!!!!!  My mind was blown.  As was my diet. 

If that wasn't enough.  The next day I went back. 

Day 2:

Almond.  I'm a huge fan of Bear Claws.  I love me some almond.  This was really intriguing.  The ends were quite crisp and airy.  The center was softer and a little more dense.  Over all the flavor won me over!

Sugar.  For some reason when you haven't had the opportunity to have a plain old sugar donut for months... sugar donuts are AMAZING!  This one has a slight caramely flavor and the sugar is coarser than we are used to.  Winner!

Cheese.  I actually wasn't a huge fan of this one either.  Again the cheese is far to creamy and this was mixed with some kind of mayonnaise and then broiled.  Not for me.  I bequeathed it to Ruth and two minutes it was gone so I'm going to guess she thought it was good. 

Chocolate and Peanut.  A sweet white bread filled with pure dark chocolate and covered with peanuts.  Do I need to say more?

The chocolate bun made a second appearance because I had to get it again for a second time.  Did I mention that they come in bags of three?

Hungry yet?

Typhoon Soulik - Update 2

While I slept Soulk wept.  

Teehee.  

Soulik encountered some cold water and has de-intensified a little.  He is still packing some pretty strong winds but they have him making landfall as a Cat II now. I still think there is a period for some re-intensification before landfall but we will see.  

Current conditions:  It feels a touch cooler out today and it is a bit more windy than usual but perhaps I just notice it more because I'm expecting it to be there.  

That's all for now. 

Typhoon Soulik - Update 1

I will try to update as regularly as I have new information.  

I have new information.  And some old information that you all might just want to know.  

In case you were wondering.  I live in Taichung right now.  Which is in North-Central Taiwan.  

I'm really proud of how accurate that pin is.  Like EXACTLY where I live.  Doing this for Taiwan is hard because the English spelling of Chinese words (pinyon) is hardly standardized. 

Time for a little geography lesson.  Taiwan is an island formed from a mountain range deep on the ocean floor.  What that means is that the entire center (spine) of Taiwan is all mountains.  Pretty high mountains for the region too.  

What do you remember from 4th grade?  The blue part is obviously land.  (AD shout out!)

Mountains and typhoons have an interesting relationship.  Interestingly enough Taichung is probably the safest city on this island in the case of a typhoon.  We are very well protected by the mountains and are significantly more inland than many of the other cities. 

Additionally, typhoons are a part of everyday life here.  Think about how the US would be reacting if a Cat IV hurricane was heading for NYC.  The collective freakout would probably register on the Richter Scale.  Here?  Not a word.  Ruth and I were chatting with the woman who was doing our facials tonight and she was not in the last bit worried.  Taiwan and Typhoons.  They are practically synonymous.  This small island nation has to be built to withstand gale force winds and torrential rain.  There are channels cut into the ground to guide run off from the mountains.  All of the rivers have overflow basins.  Flooding procedures along the coasts are standard.  They've done this before and they will do it again.  It is nothing new.  

Now for news of Soulik himself.  Tracking has, surprise surprise, changed.  

Let me break this image down a little bit for you since I think a lot of the time people misread these things.  The color of the typhoon symbol indicates its wind speed. Soulik is still teetering on the edge of being a supertyphoon but I'm not going to go into that now.  He's clocking winds of up to 155 mph.  Land masses have a tendency to cool oceanic waters down and so as Soulik draws nearer to Taiwan and further into the East China Sea, the water feeding the typhoon will be considerably colder.  This tends to weaken hurricanes and typhoons.  As a typhoon weakens it is carrying around less moisture and mass and tends to speed up its movement as a whole (not the wind speed.)  Right now Soulik is a slow moving storm, he has been this whole time, averaging around 12 knots.  As we look at the distance between the typhoon symbols in 12 hour increments, we see that the three purple dots and the one red one are about the same distance apart (the typhoon is maintaining a steady speed.)  However, after landfall in Taiwan the green symbol is quite a bit further away.  Our typhoon is going to weaken.  This is all very typical.  The yellow circles around each typhoon symbol is an estimated range of where the eye of the storm may be.  Because computer predicting models are only so good the further out in time you try to predict the less accurate the model will be.  

But why the sudden drop from a Cat III storm to a TS in the span of less than 200 miles?  

If you've ever lived in a mountainous area with an otherwise predictable weather pattern (like Denver) then you are familiar with the fact that mountains do crazy things to weather.  They sometimes act like literal speed bumps for huge storms.  In this case, it would seem that Soulik is going to rage into Taiwan with 130 mph winds and then have the life squeezed out of him between the upper layers of the atmosphere where typhoons don't thrive and the jagged tops of Yushan and the like.  All of the moisture being sucked up into this beast is going to rain down on Taiwan in a fury of gales and lashing branches.  While over land, typhoons don't usually grow stronger as sources for warm water are not prevalent.  So once the life is sucked out of Soulik over Taiwan he will float on his merry way and enter China as a Tropical Storm, soon to be a Tropical Depression and then just a band of slow moving, barely menacing thunderstorms sprinkling on Korea after the storm hooks back out over the Yellow Sea.  

Soulik looks like he might weaken a bit in the next 6-8  hours because of some cold water pockets, but there is definitely a window for re-intensification in the 12 hours after that.  

"Wonderful!" you say.  "That's all fine and dandy, Bess.  But what about you!?"  

Me?  I'm fine.  I live on the 2nd floor of a recently renovated home with sturdy walls.  Ruth and I stocked up on junk food, ice cream, baked treats the essentials tonight.  Tomorrow we will grab a couple extra gallons of water, find the flashlights, etc.  We have hours and hours of movies to watch, board games to play, and girl talk to have.  We are soooooooo fine.  

I will continue to update the blog as things change.  There is plenty of time for this storm to morph into a million other things.  He could fizzle out over a trough of cold water before even reaching Taiwan.  He also could benefit from a decidedly warm wind coming up from the Philippines and strengthen into a true supertyphoon.  I will not be counting my chicks before they are hatched.  

Blog updates will go on as scheduled.  I have a rivetingly delicious one that is set to go up at 8am Thursday morning CST.  In the event that the power goes out I will have limited means to update the blog but I will do my best to be in contact with my family who will then post news as they feel appropriate.  

I want this one.  Ruth is rooting for classes to be cancelled on Friday.  Send safe thoughts and prayers my way but don't wish the storm to disappear.  I want the experience and I love the excitement.  I'll see if I can snap a few photos too.  :)  

Last post until the morning! 

B

Typhoon Soulik

The last couple of days the weather weirdo in me has been clambering and prying its way out. 

TYPHOON!

This little gem has popped up over the Pacific and is making its way towards the South China Sea as we speak. 

Look at that circulation. The support bands.  The clusters of thunderstorms.  :D

Soulik is clocking in maximum sustained winds at around 130 kt and gusts up to 160 kt.  For those non-nautical/aviation folks, we're looking at a storm that has sustained winds in the range of 150 to 160 mph.  Soulik's eye is estimated to be about 25 nm across (just shy of 30 miles) and is incredibly well formed.  He's a Category IV for the time being.  So far, what makes this storm impressive is its height.  It seems to be extremely tall and is therefore capable of dumping absurdly huge amounts of rain.  There are very well formed thunderstorms that are supporting the typhoon which were photographed from a NASA satellite that flew over the area early this morning.  Favorable winds and water conditions will continue to fuel this storm as a Cat IV until it is just nearly directly south of Japan when it will encounter a subtropical steering ridge and turn towards the north.  At least, that is what the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Pearl Harbor, HI is saying.  Soulik is right on the edge of being a supertyphoon right now and as it continues to build strength over warmer waters that classification should stand.

For a long time the NWS was showing the track of this storm much farther to the north.  They finally came around and admitted it is headed straight for Taiwan. 

The tracking for this storm has been wobbly at best.  I'm not used to following storms in the Pacific like this so I'm unfamiliar with their tendencies and also the tendencies of the reporting authorities.  As best as I can tell this storm is going to hit northern Taiwan with significant force if not the brunt of the storm.  The rocky geography of the island will take its toll and Soulik will be downgraded to a CAT I or TS before it reaches mainland China.  The diameter of the storm is out to about 200 nm right now and might contract as its strength grows.  No matter where the eye of the storm passes, I will be affected.


AND I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!  


Excuse me while I go hoard water and non-perishable foods.  I'll keep you updated as the storm progresses.  For now we have blue skies and big white puffy clouds.  I expect the wind to pick up tonight. 

Q&A - Week 4

The point of the Q&A posts was certainly not to ensure that I wrote once a week... but that is what they've turned into.  I apologize.  I find myself working many hours these days and rarely ever leaving the school campus. There isn't much on the campus that is interesting enough to write about so I have to stockpile the interesting for later.

1)  What are you going to do for the 4th?  (Wayne)

Well.  Last weekend a few of us went to a 4th of July/Canada celebration that was put on by the City of Taichung Chamber of Commerce.  It was a good  attempt at providing the many ex-pats and foreigners here in Taiwan some good ol' 'Merican patriotism.  There were Exploding Cheese Hamburgers and craft beer.  There were men selling Indian food and more with Turkish ice cream.  There were German pork steaks and a Mexican stall complete with quesadillas.  There was Spanish paella and sangria and so on.  As best as I can tell, for the Taiwanese, "American" is anything that isn't Asian.

This was the sky as we were leaving for the festival.  Photo credit goes to Andrew. 

There was also American/Canadian style music.  The band that played while were there was a trio of Indie Rockers from Glasgow....

I rest my case.  It was a good try.

I'd seen this particular Turkish Ice Cream guy.  I knew that he messed with people when they bought their cone.  So when Andrew said that he was going to partake (unknowing of the comedy to come) I whipped out the camera and thought I would try to catch it.  Mildly successful I think. Editor's note: This is what happens when you don't check your settings before you take a photo. 

I did do one extremely American thing that night however.  I finally got my hands on good cheese.   Heck, GREAT cheese.  The Wisconsin in me is still alive and well.

On the 4th specifically I did... nothing. Some of the Americans on the Morrison Campus had a bon fire and some sparklers.  Mostly, I stressed about work and spent a few hours preparing for my classes the next morning.

2)  Junk food.  Give us a break down. (Janet)

Everything. They have Lays, and Doritos, and Ferroro Rocher.  Granted not all things taste the same.  They also have new things like pea chips and shrimp chips (no I haven't tried them yet), they have horse beans (I'll leave that for another post) and almost everything is garlic flavored.

A common snack for me is dried mango and cashews.  Or chocolate covered almonds.  Or popcorn chicken (available semi-fresh from your local 7/11). 

3)  Where the HECK have you been?

Right.  Okay.  So.  What?  The last week and a half has been really quite hard.  I have been working many, many hours.  I've had some big, big decisions on my plate.  I've also been waging a war on all fronts in our home against bugs and vermin.  The housing provided to us by our employer has some serious cockroach, mosquito, spider, mice, gecko, etc problems.  After waking up from a short nap on the couch Friday afternoon with a cockroach in my hair I LOST IT.  I booked a hotel in downtown Taichung and I was out of there in less than an hour.  My roomies and I spent the weekend at a schmancy hotel downtown and did absolutely nothing.  We lounged around in comfortable beds.  We soaked in functioning air conditioning.  We enjoyed the bug free bathrooms.  It was a little slice of heaven.  Most importantly... we did no work.  Work was not an option.  We didn't discuss work, we didn't whine about work, we didn't do any work.  We just vegged.

I've learned to appreciate my surroundings and the effect they have on my mood.  The last two weeks I have not had any motivation to blog just because I could never relax.  I was always watching out for a cockroach to run across my foot, or a gecko above my head.  That's no way to live.  Thankfully, Ruth and I managed to arrange other housing which we moved into last night.  Let me tell you.  It is great!  I slept so well last night.  I had a calm morning where I actually sat down and ate breakfast.  I'm organized and clean and ready to go.  I actually tried to look cute for work because I could use the bathroom to get ready without a full on offensive from the spider clan.  There are of course lingering stresses but hopefully in the next week my blood pressure will return to a normal, healthy state and my blogging will resume as normal.  I do have quite a lot of fun things to write about.  At least I think so. 

Check back for your normal programming starting this week. :)